Oscars rehash: ’09, Year of Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda

Who wants to be millionaire? Apparently not as many people as wanted to be the Dark Knight or an environmentally aware robot.What if there had 10 Best Picture nominees a year earlier?

The original five were all worthy of the larger list, even The Reader and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, both of which seemed nominated based on reputation, expectation or marketing. Along with those two plus Milk, Frost/Nixon and eventual winner Slumdog Millionaire, add these:

WALL-E: The best Pixar movie and possibly the best animated movie ever. Daring and smart, the sort of animated movie that actually talks to its audience instead of looking down on it.

The Visitor: Richard Jenkins was at least nominated for Best Actor, but this movie should have been among the original five.

The Dark Knight: The sort of movie for which the expanded list was created. It made a ton of money and was still respected by most critics. A perfect movie? No, and personally I was distracted by the alleged Gotham setting that was obviously and recognizably Chicago, but it is the sort of big budget, event movie that should be rewarded somehow so that more like it and fewer like Transformers are made.

In Bruges: Takes the place on the list that An Education holds this year, the small, well-acted British movie that more people should have seen.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Tough call. Maybe Gran Torino would have gotten in based on Clint Eastwood's recent Oscar history. Or maybe Synedoche, New York, for its ambition, but my bet would be on acknowledgment of a rejuvenated Woody Allen, who found new life (Scoop, notwithstanding) with Scarlett Johansson as his muse and a new troupe of actors and yet another new setting.

What should have won: Frost/Nixon was well acted and intriguing, but it was revisionist history. As many people consider the Frost interviews a farce as consider them revelatory. At best, Frost got Nixon to admit something everyone already knew. At worst, Nixon actually managed to duck Frost in a way he wouldn't have been able to duck, say, Mike Wallace. In any case, good movie, not Best Picture material.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button felt as excruciatingly long as the life of said Mr. Button.

So Slumdog Millionaire, despite its independentish pedigree and budget, is more movie than film, so what?

Milk, like Michael Mann's Ali, is a lesson in how to make a traditional biopic without taking a stale, simple approach. Both movies tell stories not just of their chosen character but of the time in which they lived. Movies like Ray and Walk the Line try to tell chronological stories of their characters, but nearly anyone worthy of an entire movie about their lives must also be a significant part of the times in which they lived. To ignore that, or to dismiss it with some retro clothing and vintage cars parked along the street, misses the point of what makes these figures culturally and historically significant. I have no problem with Slumdog having won Best Picture, but Milk is the more powerful film.

Even though there is precious little to be happy about in the movie, The Reader was just happy to be nominated. Kate Winslet was justly rewarded for her performance, but the movie seemed to dodge all the issues it was intended to confront.

Better movies that got screwed: WALL-E. This was the movie we had been waiting from Pixar, a perfect blend of inventiveness and magic in a movie that acknowledges its filmmaking roots. It's bold -- nearly silent for the first third; imaginative -- most of the dialogue consists of just two words, WALL-E and Eve, spoken with different intonations throughout the movie; and visually stunning -- the moment where WALL-E sticks his robot hand up into stardust is maybe the most visually perfect moment in all the Pixar movies. WALL-E was the moment where the genre of computer animation merged with film as a whole.

Worst award: Nothing too tragic stands out, but Slumdog's "Jai Ho" seems more anthem than song, while Peter Gabriel deserves some credit for taking over what had once been the traditional Randy Newman Pixar song and replacing it with something beautiful and poignant with "Down to Earth."